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University of Southern California
DAILY • TROJAN
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1968, VOL. LX, NO. 46
Helen denies rumor of inadequate coverage
Photo by Robert Herrup
By GEORGE BLAINE
Cynthia Watson, Helen of Troy for 1968, denied a report that she, as well as the UCLA football queen for 1968, had not been accorded the traditional honors and publicity.
Miss Watson and Carolyn Webb, the UCLA queen, are the first Negro coeds to be so honored on both campuses.
The Rev. Janies Hargett of the Association of Black Ministers made the charge at a Los Angeles news conference Friday afternoon.
“We were disappointed when we learned how the queens were treated,” he said in announcing the group had collected $500 for each woman’s wardrobe.
The report that she had been slighted is not true, Miss Watson said, and its origin is still unknown.
Miss Watson talked with Mr. Hargett on the telephone after she heard the charges had been made and
assured him that she had been shown every courtesy and honor, but that the rumor had put her in a difficult position.
“I am very proud that my people were concerned about me and I don’t want them to feel that I would be afraid to speak up if something were wrong, but the rumor is just not true,” she said.
“Everywhere I have gone the people have been really nice to me. I have gotten nation-wide coverage and I have been a guest on five radio stations and three television stations.”
The senior in sociology said that she has never been ignored anywhere she has gone but that she understands Mr. Hargett’s position.
She continued, “I don’t blame Rev. Hargett, he was only acting in my best interest. No matter who wins Helen of Troy, it seems as though it is some
Hope may announce Heisman winner
By RIVIAN TAYLOR Hope show writer
An early announcement of the 1968 Heisman Trophy winner could possibly be made tonight at 7:15 at the Bob “USC” Hope Show.
Hope will bring his troupe of stars. Glen Campbell, Vic Damone, James Garner. Barbara McNair. Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66, Juliet Prowse and John Wayne to the LA Sports Arena for the show. Damone and Garner were added to the bill last weekend.
Bob Hope Productions have been working for over a month on the early release of the winner’s name. Much of the sports world anticipates Trojan halfback. O.J. Simpson to win the coveted award. Originally, the announcement was scheduled for tomorrow.
Beginning the program will be a pre-show rally to prepare Troy for its classic clash with the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame Saturday, a rivalry’ which dates back over 40 years.
The rally, emceed by Dick (Sweet Dick) Whittington of KGIL. will feature coach John McKay; the football squad. Jess Hill, the athletic director: Ed (Moose) Krause. Notre Dame athletic director, and the USC yell leaders and song girls.
The show will then continue with Hope and his guests.
Proceeds from the show will be used to provide USC scholarships for disadvantaged students. The proceeds will augment the university’s programs of aid. counselling and recruitment for students from low-income areas.
It is no small coincidence that Hope is producing such a show. Though he will always be well-known as an entertainer, Hope has proven himself a humanitarian, who has raised millions of dollars for worthy causes. He has traveled six million miles to entertain
10 million GIs since 1941, and has appeared in countless benefit shows.
Each year he hosts the Bob Hope Desert Golf Classic to raise funds for desert charties and each year he performs at a series of college shows accross the country. “Hope appeals to the nation’s young people, whether they are in uniform overseas or on the college campus,” said one college professor. They dig his brand of humor as fresh as today’s headlines. They love it when the jester pulls the rug out from under the king.”
Hope shrugs off praise for making the Christmas tours with the comment that being away over the holidays is his way of not having to send Christmas cards. But when pressed for a serious reason, he explains:
“The GIs have done a lot more for me than I’ve ever done for them.” Hope has received more than 800 awards and citations for his efforts, making him the most honored performer in history. His awards include the Congressional Gold Medal from President John Kennedy in 1963, the Medal of Merit from Gen. Dwight Eisenhower in 1946, and a USO plaque from President Lyndon Johnson in 1966.
John Wayne, likewise, has a special interest in tonight’s show. Wayne attended USC in the late 1920’s on a
scholarship, played football for Coach Howard Jones, was national chairman of USC’s Annual Giving Program in 1967 and was awarded a doctorate in Fine Arts in 1968 from USC.
An all-time top box office attraction, Wayne has been lsited on the Film Stars’ Top Ten list every year since 1949. He is currently filming “True Grit” based on Charles Portis’ best seller, with Glen Campbell.
Campbell, currently enjoying record high sales with “Witchita Lineman,” is another of Hope’s guests. Campbell spent many hard-working years in Hollywood as a studio musician before his overnight success hits, “Gentle on My Mind,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “Hey‘ Little One,” placed him on the top of the major hit lists.
Latin rock sound by Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66 will fill the Sports Arena as well. The Sergio Mendes sound, with its Latin style and its distinctive rhythm, is a different type of sound. It is bossa nova plus some rock, some sweet Beatle and some lonely Bachrach.
In addition to Mendes, Brasil ’66 includes Sebastio Neto, Dom Um Romeo, Rubens Bassini. Karen Philipp and Lani Hall.
The group has performed on television many times, at state fairs, at concerts and at colleges across the country. Mendes said he finds college dates the most rewarding.
“They understand what we are doing and are by far the most appreciative,” he said.
Dancer Juliet Prowse will also
Urban conflict here to stay, says Paul Jacobs
By LIN FARLEY Assistant editorial director
“What we’ll have when we get a man up on the moon is probably one less damn fool on earth and that’s about all,” Paul Jacobs, a 50-year-old leader of the New Left, said in a short news conference Friday.
Jacobs followed up his personal estimate of the worth of the moon shot with a more generalized picture of the space race, saying:
“I’d be willing at this point to give the moon to the Russians in exchange for solving the problem of smog in Los Angeles and figuring out how we can get cars over the railroad tracks from airports.”
The short, contemporary lookalike for Vladimir Ilych Lenin was piqued by his delay due to fog in departing from San Francisco Airport for Los Angeles.
Adding to this natural element however, Jacobs made clear, were such stupid and unnecessary delays as a rerouting to Burbank Airport and finally a train which kept him tied up in traffic.
All of these he said were indications of America’s insufficient attention to her cities’ physical environment, and he cited his recent experience with the change from fog white to smog-brown as a striking visible illustration of this point.
Jacobs, who wrote “Prelude to Riot: A View of Urban America from the Bottom,” used physical environment as a launching point for a wide-ranging indictment of society as it is presently structured.
“College unrest will increase.” the
PAUL JACOBS Photo by Jamie Baldwin
former instructor at San Francisco State College said, “although perhaps not on the USC campus.
“It seemed a little strange to me to walk on this campus today; I’m not used to a campus without policemen, without the tactical squad standing by.”
On police, Jacobs, who has a long career of arrests as both a labor leader and vocal spokesman for the militant left, feels they have overreached their bounds as policemen.
“They’ve adopted military tactics. You have a Watts festival in Los Angeles and the surveillance helicopters fly overhead much as they do at Khe Sanh. That’s not a bad parallel, either.” he added.
perform tonight. She received world wide acclaim for her performances in “Sweet Charity.”
Barbara McNair is still another of Hope’s guests. Miss McNair, currently filming “Stiletto” in New York, has cancelled all her engagements this month, except for the Hope special, in order to work on her film.
She was recently honored by the Los Angeles City Council, for her
ambition and her dedication to her fellow man and to the entertainment field.
Reserved seat tickets at $3 and $5 are still available at the Bovard Auditorium box office, the Sports Arena box office, and at Mutual and Liberty Ticket agencies. Mail ticket orders received after Nov. 19 will be held in will call tonight in the Sports Arena box office.
The longtime staff consultant to the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions approached the racial question in a highly personal
way.
He simply asked the city managers themselves if they didn’t think it odd that not one black face could be seen among them.
Then, after quickly drawing on a thin cigar, Jacobs recalled that he hadn’t heard one Spanish surname when the managers and officials from cities such as Pomona and Manhattan Beach had introduced themselves.
He told his audience that this fact must obviously indicate to them, as it did to him, that some of the people they manage were not in positions to participate in that management.
“Are you managing services or are you managing people?” he asked.
Summing up his indictment of the present state of affairs, Jacobs read from his notes:
“What we have today is a fragmentation of government services, an overlapping of functions of the government and an inadequate tax structure to finance the entire system while more and more citizens become more and more alienated.”
On the strength of this statement and his foregoing instances of the present systejn’s failure, Jacobs contradicted the title of his speech and said instead, “There are no alternatives to urban conflict.” He added the word no.
“Conflict will get much worse,” he said, “and I would like to suggest that such is the case because we—all of us—have incorrect assumptions.”
Students
pull RFs
on UCLA
Nine USC students were apprehended by the police at UCLA as they painted "USC" on Founder's Rock and a brick wall on the Westwood campus early yesterday morning. The students agreed to clean up what they had painted and were then released.
Another incident occurred just as the Daily Trojan was about to play its annual Blood Bowl football game against the Daily Bruin staff. An unnamed USC student dropped
14,000 pieces of red and yellow paper from a rented airplane. Each paper was stamped "Bruins, you are about to be skunked again in '68."
Bruins unsuccessful in attack on Tommy
The reports from the Knights who were gathered to protect Tommy Trojan from any evil that might befall him Thursday night revealed two indisputable facts.
• The scene was indeed Tommy Trojan.
• The time was exactly between 2:30 and 3:30 a.m.
Beyond these basic pieces of information the stories of those present vary amazingly. One reason for this is that the Squires assigned to guard the Trojan statue from marauding bands from UCLA, had taken up their positions in sleeping bags around the base of the statue. By the time real action took place, most of them were happily asleep.
The Knights, a more diligent group, whiled away the evening hours playing football. As the game went on, however, Aliens penetrated the Trojan defenses.
John McCallister, one of the
kind of tradition for complaints to be made, even by people here at USC.
“I am proud to be representing the black students on campus as well as the entire university. To my way of thinking Helen of Troy is not a racial thing—I like to think that I was chosen because of me.”
In a telephone interview Friday night, Mr. Hargett said the $500 was still committed to Miss Watson, although she had not received it yet, and noted he had given the UCLA queen, Carolyn Webb, her money that afternoon.
“We made it clear that after talking to Cynthia she felt she had been adequately received by the university,” he said.
He was critical of press coverage of the queens, however. “There was no projection over the mass media alerting the Southern California community of this exciting and unprecedented event,” he said.
“This sould have been considered newsworthy. It there is a riot or a sit-in the cameras are there. The press is responsible to project both concerns.”
He also said the black community should be the first to respond in the future when a black person gets such an honor.
New BSU
Knights on duty, said that the group had apparently been hanging around for some time before they approached the statue.
“A Knight on his way to the restroom near Bovard spotted them sneaking through the bushes,” McCallister said. ■“When he put out a yell they made a rush, trying to hit Tommy Trojan with paint balloons and arrows that were tipped with paint-filled glass bulbs.”
The offenders were chased to Birnkrant parking lot after they had managed to defile the base of the statue with paint. McCallister said that seven were turned over to the campus police.
Gary Ashcraft, another Knight, said that there were actually two raids pulled on the dauntless statue that night. The first, which seems to be the one described by McCallister, produced some paint on the base of Tommy Trojan. Ashcraft said that no more than four persons were involved.
bulletin to begin
By ROZ SILVER
Black Trojan, the Black Student Union’s newsletter, will be available to all students starting Wednesday at the organization’s table on campus.
The newsletter, launched three weeks ago to provide a forum for the expression of black feelings and opinions and to create a channel of communication for the BSU, was previously distributed at the regular BSU meetings on Fridays.
“We hope to examine racial tensions in general, as well as organizations and movements on campus, and let our own members know what’s happening,” Bob Silva, the paper’s editor, said. “But I think even more important is creating unity and identity among black students.”
“It’s hard enough to have the temporary identity of being a student, but for us it’s doubly hard.” he said. “We have a culture and a history, but nothing in the curriculum or the institutional structure of the university reflects this.”
Silva hopes to use the newsletter to pull together the different things that are happening on campus and relate them to the black students, in an effort to avert the type of conflict that comes from unexpressed feeling.
“The atmosphere here is not conducive to true integration. There’s a pattern of institutionalized racism that leads to distrust on both sides.
“In five more years, there will be two or three times as many black students and unless there’s going to be some changes, that’s when trouble could come. We hope the newspaper will help people understand this now!” he said.
The weekly newsletter, a 10 to 12 page mimeographed booklet, written by ten BSU members with previous journalism experience, contains information on outside activities from the Black Voice, a Los Angeles-based black newspaper, and original poems and stories.
The November 15 edition contained a poem critical of O.J. Simpson called “O.J., be a revolutionary, idol for something meaningful.” The paper also features a column called “Blackademia,” answering questions about the black man and American culture, and a column that supplements or reacts to articles in the Daily Trojan.
“We accept contributions from anybody,” Silva said, “but we give priority to blark students because of the imbalance there is in the rest of the university’s channels of communication.” Anyone interested in contributing should go to the BSU office at the Social Action Center, 702 West 34th Street.
Eventually the BSU would like to develop the newsletter into a bi-monthly publication and use it as a communication link between black students at USC and the surrounding black community.

University of Southern California
DAILY • TROJAN
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1968, VOL. LX, NO. 46
Helen denies rumor of inadequate coverage
Photo by Robert Herrup
By GEORGE BLAINE
Cynthia Watson, Helen of Troy for 1968, denied a report that she, as well as the UCLA football queen for 1968, had not been accorded the traditional honors and publicity.
Miss Watson and Carolyn Webb, the UCLA queen, are the first Negro coeds to be so honored on both campuses.
The Rev. Janies Hargett of the Association of Black Ministers made the charge at a Los Angeles news conference Friday afternoon.
“We were disappointed when we learned how the queens were treated,” he said in announcing the group had collected $500 for each woman’s wardrobe.
The report that she had been slighted is not true, Miss Watson said, and its origin is still unknown.
Miss Watson talked with Mr. Hargett on the telephone after she heard the charges had been made and
assured him that she had been shown every courtesy and honor, but that the rumor had put her in a difficult position.
“I am very proud that my people were concerned about me and I don’t want them to feel that I would be afraid to speak up if something were wrong, but the rumor is just not true,” she said.
“Everywhere I have gone the people have been really nice to me. I have gotten nation-wide coverage and I have been a guest on five radio stations and three television stations.”
The senior in sociology said that she has never been ignored anywhere she has gone but that she understands Mr. Hargett’s position.
She continued, “I don’t blame Rev. Hargett, he was only acting in my best interest. No matter who wins Helen of Troy, it seems as though it is some
Hope may announce Heisman winner
By RIVIAN TAYLOR Hope show writer
An early announcement of the 1968 Heisman Trophy winner could possibly be made tonight at 7:15 at the Bob “USC” Hope Show.
Hope will bring his troupe of stars. Glen Campbell, Vic Damone, James Garner. Barbara McNair. Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66, Juliet Prowse and John Wayne to the LA Sports Arena for the show. Damone and Garner were added to the bill last weekend.
Bob Hope Productions have been working for over a month on the early release of the winner’s name. Much of the sports world anticipates Trojan halfback. O.J. Simpson to win the coveted award. Originally, the announcement was scheduled for tomorrow.
Beginning the program will be a pre-show rally to prepare Troy for its classic clash with the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame Saturday, a rivalry’ which dates back over 40 years.
The rally, emceed by Dick (Sweet Dick) Whittington of KGIL. will feature coach John McKay; the football squad. Jess Hill, the athletic director: Ed (Moose) Krause. Notre Dame athletic director, and the USC yell leaders and song girls.
The show will then continue with Hope and his guests.
Proceeds from the show will be used to provide USC scholarships for disadvantaged students. The proceeds will augment the university’s programs of aid. counselling and recruitment for students from low-income areas.
It is no small coincidence that Hope is producing such a show. Though he will always be well-known as an entertainer, Hope has proven himself a humanitarian, who has raised millions of dollars for worthy causes. He has traveled six million miles to entertain
10 million GIs since 1941, and has appeared in countless benefit shows.
Each year he hosts the Bob Hope Desert Golf Classic to raise funds for desert charties and each year he performs at a series of college shows accross the country. “Hope appeals to the nation’s young people, whether they are in uniform overseas or on the college campus,” said one college professor. They dig his brand of humor as fresh as today’s headlines. They love it when the jester pulls the rug out from under the king.”
Hope shrugs off praise for making the Christmas tours with the comment that being away over the holidays is his way of not having to send Christmas cards. But when pressed for a serious reason, he explains:
“The GIs have done a lot more for me than I’ve ever done for them.” Hope has received more than 800 awards and citations for his efforts, making him the most honored performer in history. His awards include the Congressional Gold Medal from President John Kennedy in 1963, the Medal of Merit from Gen. Dwight Eisenhower in 1946, and a USO plaque from President Lyndon Johnson in 1966.
John Wayne, likewise, has a special interest in tonight’s show. Wayne attended USC in the late 1920’s on a
scholarship, played football for Coach Howard Jones, was national chairman of USC’s Annual Giving Program in 1967 and was awarded a doctorate in Fine Arts in 1968 from USC.
An all-time top box office attraction, Wayne has been lsited on the Film Stars’ Top Ten list every year since 1949. He is currently filming “True Grit” based on Charles Portis’ best seller, with Glen Campbell.
Campbell, currently enjoying record high sales with “Witchita Lineman,” is another of Hope’s guests. Campbell spent many hard-working years in Hollywood as a studio musician before his overnight success hits, “Gentle on My Mind,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “Hey‘ Little One,” placed him on the top of the major hit lists.
Latin rock sound by Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66 will fill the Sports Arena as well. The Sergio Mendes sound, with its Latin style and its distinctive rhythm, is a different type of sound. It is bossa nova plus some rock, some sweet Beatle and some lonely Bachrach.
In addition to Mendes, Brasil ’66 includes Sebastio Neto, Dom Um Romeo, Rubens Bassini. Karen Philipp and Lani Hall.
The group has performed on television many times, at state fairs, at concerts and at colleges across the country. Mendes said he finds college dates the most rewarding.
“They understand what we are doing and are by far the most appreciative,” he said.
Dancer Juliet Prowse will also
Urban conflict here to stay, says Paul Jacobs
By LIN FARLEY Assistant editorial director
“What we’ll have when we get a man up on the moon is probably one less damn fool on earth and that’s about all,” Paul Jacobs, a 50-year-old leader of the New Left, said in a short news conference Friday.
Jacobs followed up his personal estimate of the worth of the moon shot with a more generalized picture of the space race, saying:
“I’d be willing at this point to give the moon to the Russians in exchange for solving the problem of smog in Los Angeles and figuring out how we can get cars over the railroad tracks from airports.”
The short, contemporary lookalike for Vladimir Ilych Lenin was piqued by his delay due to fog in departing from San Francisco Airport for Los Angeles.
Adding to this natural element however, Jacobs made clear, were such stupid and unnecessary delays as a rerouting to Burbank Airport and finally a train which kept him tied up in traffic.
All of these he said were indications of America’s insufficient attention to her cities’ physical environment, and he cited his recent experience with the change from fog white to smog-brown as a striking visible illustration of this point.
Jacobs, who wrote “Prelude to Riot: A View of Urban America from the Bottom,” used physical environment as a launching point for a wide-ranging indictment of society as it is presently structured.
“College unrest will increase.” the
PAUL JACOBS Photo by Jamie Baldwin
former instructor at San Francisco State College said, “although perhaps not on the USC campus.
“It seemed a little strange to me to walk on this campus today; I’m not used to a campus without policemen, without the tactical squad standing by.”
On police, Jacobs, who has a long career of arrests as both a labor leader and vocal spokesman for the militant left, feels they have overreached their bounds as policemen.
“They’ve adopted military tactics. You have a Watts festival in Los Angeles and the surveillance helicopters fly overhead much as they do at Khe Sanh. That’s not a bad parallel, either.” he added.
perform tonight. She received world wide acclaim for her performances in “Sweet Charity.”
Barbara McNair is still another of Hope’s guests. Miss McNair, currently filming “Stiletto” in New York, has cancelled all her engagements this month, except for the Hope special, in order to work on her film.
She was recently honored by the Los Angeles City Council, for her
ambition and her dedication to her fellow man and to the entertainment field.
Reserved seat tickets at $3 and $5 are still available at the Bovard Auditorium box office, the Sports Arena box office, and at Mutual and Liberty Ticket agencies. Mail ticket orders received after Nov. 19 will be held in will call tonight in the Sports Arena box office.
The longtime staff consultant to the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions approached the racial question in a highly personal
way.
He simply asked the city managers themselves if they didn’t think it odd that not one black face could be seen among them.
Then, after quickly drawing on a thin cigar, Jacobs recalled that he hadn’t heard one Spanish surname when the managers and officials from cities such as Pomona and Manhattan Beach had introduced themselves.
He told his audience that this fact must obviously indicate to them, as it did to him, that some of the people they manage were not in positions to participate in that management.
“Are you managing services or are you managing people?” he asked.
Summing up his indictment of the present state of affairs, Jacobs read from his notes:
“What we have today is a fragmentation of government services, an overlapping of functions of the government and an inadequate tax structure to finance the entire system while more and more citizens become more and more alienated.”
On the strength of this statement and his foregoing instances of the present systejn’s failure, Jacobs contradicted the title of his speech and said instead, “There are no alternatives to urban conflict.” He added the word no.
“Conflict will get much worse,” he said, “and I would like to suggest that such is the case because we—all of us—have incorrect assumptions.”
Students
pull RFs
on UCLA
Nine USC students were apprehended by the police at UCLA as they painted "USC" on Founder's Rock and a brick wall on the Westwood campus early yesterday morning. The students agreed to clean up what they had painted and were then released.
Another incident occurred just as the Daily Trojan was about to play its annual Blood Bowl football game against the Daily Bruin staff. An unnamed USC student dropped
14,000 pieces of red and yellow paper from a rented airplane. Each paper was stamped "Bruins, you are about to be skunked again in '68."
Bruins unsuccessful in attack on Tommy
The reports from the Knights who were gathered to protect Tommy Trojan from any evil that might befall him Thursday night revealed two indisputable facts.
• The scene was indeed Tommy Trojan.
• The time was exactly between 2:30 and 3:30 a.m.
Beyond these basic pieces of information the stories of those present vary amazingly. One reason for this is that the Squires assigned to guard the Trojan statue from marauding bands from UCLA, had taken up their positions in sleeping bags around the base of the statue. By the time real action took place, most of them were happily asleep.
The Knights, a more diligent group, whiled away the evening hours playing football. As the game went on, however, Aliens penetrated the Trojan defenses.
John McCallister, one of the
kind of tradition for complaints to be made, even by people here at USC.
“I am proud to be representing the black students on campus as well as the entire university. To my way of thinking Helen of Troy is not a racial thing—I like to think that I was chosen because of me.”
In a telephone interview Friday night, Mr. Hargett said the $500 was still committed to Miss Watson, although she had not received it yet, and noted he had given the UCLA queen, Carolyn Webb, her money that afternoon.
“We made it clear that after talking to Cynthia she felt she had been adequately received by the university,” he said.
He was critical of press coverage of the queens, however. “There was no projection over the mass media alerting the Southern California community of this exciting and unprecedented event,” he said.
“This sould have been considered newsworthy. It there is a riot or a sit-in the cameras are there. The press is responsible to project both concerns.”
He also said the black community should be the first to respond in the future when a black person gets such an honor.
New BSU
Knights on duty, said that the group had apparently been hanging around for some time before they approached the statue.
“A Knight on his way to the restroom near Bovard spotted them sneaking through the bushes,” McCallister said. ■“When he put out a yell they made a rush, trying to hit Tommy Trojan with paint balloons and arrows that were tipped with paint-filled glass bulbs.”
The offenders were chased to Birnkrant parking lot after they had managed to defile the base of the statue with paint. McCallister said that seven were turned over to the campus police.
Gary Ashcraft, another Knight, said that there were actually two raids pulled on the dauntless statue that night. The first, which seems to be the one described by McCallister, produced some paint on the base of Tommy Trojan. Ashcraft said that no more than four persons were involved.
bulletin to begin
By ROZ SILVER
Black Trojan, the Black Student Union’s newsletter, will be available to all students starting Wednesday at the organization’s table on campus.
The newsletter, launched three weeks ago to provide a forum for the expression of black feelings and opinions and to create a channel of communication for the BSU, was previously distributed at the regular BSU meetings on Fridays.
“We hope to examine racial tensions in general, as well as organizations and movements on campus, and let our own members know what’s happening,” Bob Silva, the paper’s editor, said. “But I think even more important is creating unity and identity among black students.”
“It’s hard enough to have the temporary identity of being a student, but for us it’s doubly hard.” he said. “We have a culture and a history, but nothing in the curriculum or the institutional structure of the university reflects this.”
Silva hopes to use the newsletter to pull together the different things that are happening on campus and relate them to the black students, in an effort to avert the type of conflict that comes from unexpressed feeling.
“The atmosphere here is not conducive to true integration. There’s a pattern of institutionalized racism that leads to distrust on both sides.
“In five more years, there will be two or three times as many black students and unless there’s going to be some changes, that’s when trouble could come. We hope the newspaper will help people understand this now!” he said.
The weekly newsletter, a 10 to 12 page mimeographed booklet, written by ten BSU members with previous journalism experience, contains information on outside activities from the Black Voice, a Los Angeles-based black newspaper, and original poems and stories.
The November 15 edition contained a poem critical of O.J. Simpson called “O.J., be a revolutionary, idol for something meaningful.” The paper also features a column called “Blackademia,” answering questions about the black man and American culture, and a column that supplements or reacts to articles in the Daily Trojan.
“We accept contributions from anybody,” Silva said, “but we give priority to blark students because of the imbalance there is in the rest of the university’s channels of communication.” Anyone interested in contributing should go to the BSU office at the Social Action Center, 702 West 34th Street.
Eventually the BSU would like to develop the newsletter into a bi-monthly publication and use it as a communication link between black students at USC and the surrounding black community.